


The Centre Cannot Hold

by SophiaCatherine



Series: At Home with the Legends [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Character, Autistic Ray Palmer, Disabled Character, Emotional Support, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 23:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13088148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/SophiaCatherine
Summary: Ray sometimes wishes he could be... different. The team don't see things that way.





	The Centre Cannot Hold

**Author's Note:**

> A Ray Palmer character study.
> 
> Thank you so much to [everyperfectsummer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer) and [mmtion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmtion/pseuds/mmtion) for beta reading.

Ray loves fixing things.

He loves working through a problem until it has a solution. Starting with a broken piece, and shaping and reshaping, turning and turning. Until it once again fits into a functioning machine, efficient and beautiful. 

Making things make sense.

* * *

Ray is in his lab by 7 that morning. He’s just thinking about going to look for coffee or breakfast when Jax arrives.

“Hey, Jax,” he says, looking up from where he’s sitting at his workstation. “And what do you have for me this fine morning?”

“Vortex manipulator refusing to work,” Jax says, handing it over. “This thing is so vital to the time drive that it shouldn’t even _be_ outside the engine room, but it’s a bit more of the electronics than I usually go in for. Tell me it makes some sense to you? ‘Cause we can’t jump without it, and I’m pretty sure Sara’s going to remove all my teeth one by one if we have to delay this mission any more.” 

“Ouch,” Ray replies, but Jax is already starting to sound distant. Ray is turning, turning the little beeping-flashing piece of machinery in his hands. It’s an electronic cog made to fit futuristic clockwork. It’s perfect and mysterious and it nearly, but not quite, makes sense. “Yeah, I think I’ve got this,” he says slowly.

Jax adds something about what time he needs it by, and he’s gone.

“Sure, Jax,” Ray replies to the empty room.

* * *

The time drive component turns out to be a challenge. An exciting one, but still. Ray hasn’t put down his tools all morning. 

It’s just when he’s sunk deepest into his process that the noise starts up.

He ignores it. “OK, little dude, we are _almost_ there. Now let’s see what you do if I do this…”

The noise comes back into focus. Most of the team seems to be out in the corridor, arguing about something, voices rising fast towards yelling pitch. He feels his face twist and reaches for his noise-cancelling headphones. The noise dulls to a murmur, and he moves his focus back to his workbench.

A few minutes later, he becomes vaguely aware of exasperation at the door. He takes the headphones off. “Ray,” Sara says. “We need to leave. Jax is making noises about you not being finished yet with something he needs?”

He forces his eyes away from the component on the workbench, and up at her. “Sorry, Sara. I’m almost there. Ten minutes.” 

“ _Five_ minutes! Or your bones can rattle around the lab while we jump,” she calls back from the corridor.

“Not without that time drive part, they can’t,” Jax shouts after her, replacing her in the doorway. “Where is it, Ray? I’ve got a ship to jump out of here.”

He glances up. “Sorry, Jax - it’s coming. Just a few minutes. I just have to set the clock here and close the…" He trails off.

“OK. Thanks.” Jax leans against the door frame, tapping out an anxious rhythm against the metal wall. 

Ray feels himself tense up. He keeps working, though, carefully turning tiny screws into the casing. This can’t be rushed. He just needs a little longer.

Jax keeps tapping.

The noise starts to drum in Ray’s head. 

“Ray?”

“Yes, it’s coming!” he barks. He looks up at a surprised Jax and forces a smile. “Sorry, man, didn’t mean that. Nearly there.”

Sara’s head appears around the door again. “Ray, I swear to God. We need to _leave_ —"

Jax pushes off the wall. “Good luck going anywhere before he’s finished with the time drive, Sara. Unless maybe you want to fly around the temporal zone in little circles like a—”

Ray tries to tune them out. He can’t understand why the screws aren’t going into place, until he realises his hands are shaking. The guys are still going at it. 

“—fuck’s sake. Could you not have got him to sort this out an hour ago?”

“Hey! I told you we might need till the afternoon. You just went on about _the urgency of the situation_."

“Which apparently you paid no—”

And just like that, everything stops making sense.

Ray drops the screwdriver. It lands with a _ding_ , the shock sounding out across the lab.

The next thing he knows, he’s curled up on the floor.

He’s vaguely aware of some commotion above him. Then Zari’s voice, distant and echoey, and when did she get here? “Everyone _out_. Give him a minute.” 

Then it’s quiet, and he almost sobs with relief. 

And Zari’s crouching next to him on the floor.

_Shit._

He hasn’t had one of these in a while, he thinks, indistinctly. He can feel himself breathing, hard but shallow. He thinks maybe he’s shaking. 

_Fantastic timing, Ray_ , part of him thinks. The rest of him doesn’t care.

* * *

Zari sits with him on the floor of the lab, for an hour. This is a bit unexpected.

She brings them tea but he doesn’t drink his. He just wraps his hands around the mug, tapping out repeating sequences against the handle. 

“Do you want me to leave?” she asks at some point.

“No,” he says, after a moment.

She’s quiet for a while. Then she says, “My brother was like you.”

Ray listens.

“I mean — not _that_ much like you.” She’s drawing patterns on the floor. “Less focused, more... chaotic. He had these meltdowns sometimes. It could get pretty scary.” She pauses. “I think it was scarier for him though.” 

He takes a long breath in. “It gets a bit much, now and then.” 

“Yeah?” she says. Carefully. Like he’s broken. 

“Yeah. Sometimes too many things build up and I shut down.” He looks at his hands, eyes wide. “It’s like... my CPU overloads.” 

She hums. “I’m sorry if we all got a bit loud. Well, I’m sorry if I did. The other assholes can apologise for themselves.”

“It’s fine,” he says, trying to mean it.

Zari raises an eyebrow cynically. 

He makes a little amused noise. “ _Fine_ , it’s not fine. But it’s not their fault. I’m not good at explaining it. They don’t — they don’t all know.”

“Hmm. Your younger self seemed happy to tell me.”

“That was then,” he shrugs. He’s staring at the ceiling. “Mom wasn’t keen on how often I told people. She said they’d think less of me. I mostly stopped, eventually.” 

_I just wish Ray would make normal friends, you know?_

Zari sits back on her heels. “That’s an interesting thing to say about your kid.”

He snorts. “Yeah.” 

“Still. You work pretty closely with this bunch of losers. And I know they care about you.” She drops the sincere tone and rolls her eyes. “They have _many_ feelings.” 

He grins a bit at that, then pauses. “I don’t want them to treat me like I’m...” He shrugs. Tries to keep his hands still. Turning, turning. “It’s hard sometimes,” he admits. “You know?” 

“Yeah. I know.”

He looks at her, which he thinks is probably progress for the past hour. “I want to do better. I want to _be_ better.”

She frowns. “Ray. You don’t need to change. You don’t have to be anyone but you.”

Huh. 

“You _don’t_ ,” she repeats. “We like you the way you are. You got that, doofus?”

He smiles. “I’ll try. Thanks, Zari.” Then he remembers. “Oh! We were supposed to be leaving.” He moves to get up, and she stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Don’t worry about that. I got them to wait. It’ll keep till later or tomorrow.”

“You made Sara abort a mission and she didn’t kill you? Is this a power that comes with your amulet, or…?”

“The captain just needs a little _handling_ sometimes.” She winks. 

“I’m not going to try to work out if that’s meant to be a double entendre. I tend to miss those.” He gestures at himself and grins. "You know. Autistic."

She laughs and shakes her head. “You feel like braving the galley? I picked up some great hot chocolate when we were in 1998.”

“Thanks, but I still need to finish the time drive repairs. It’s nearly done.”

“Jax’ll wait.”

“Oh, it’s not that. I just don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”

She glares at him. “And how long since you last ate anything, hmm?”

“Oh. Um.”

“Right then.” She gets up, decisively. “I am bringing the hot chocolate to you. And lunch.”

He ponders. “I feel like someone’s going to complain about food in the lab, but I can’t think exactly who. And it might be Gideon. Who has automatic cleaning units. So. Sure!”

She smiles and offers him her hand. 

He takes it.

* * *

It’s not until hours later that Ray goes to the bridge. (He hasn’t really been hiding. Not _really_.) He stops at the entrance to the study, which is currently holding half of the Waverider crew. 

“It’s— no, look— oh just give it to me,” Mick grumbles, grabbing the nineteenth-century lamp out of Nate’s hand (he _yelps_ ). “The oil goes _here_ , right?” He sits the lamp in front of him, filling it gently. As he does, he catches Ray’s eye. “Hey, Haircut, you’ll like this. You like old stuff, right?”

“Well, Nate’s more of the history guy,” he says, maybe just a bit too brightly. “But - OK!” He steps up to the study. Passing Jax, he hands him the formerly broken component. “One working vortex manipulator, Chief Engineer, sir.” It almost comes out as casually as he intended. 

Jax smiles. “Thanks, Ray.”

Sara gets up to get a drink, and bumps his shoulder as she does. “You. Me. Very supportive, very captain-like conversation. Later,” she whispers. “After at least—“ she inspects her glass “—a couple more drinks.”

“OK,” he laughs.

From the other side of the room, Zari grins at him, a cupcake halfway to her mouth. She looks at it. “Oh. Not gluten free. Sorry! But don’t worry, I’ll eat yours.”

“I appreciate that! I think.” He settles back in a chair, half-listening to laughter and snide comments against the background of a rapidly devolving discussion on antique fire safety. 

Some things can’t be made to fit together like cogs in a machine, he thinks, a little sadly. Some things can’t be fixed. But as he looks around the strange group, misfits and Legends and friends, he wonders whether they need to be.

Against the bright glimmer of the timestream, the ship is turning, turning, and journeying on.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for food, autistic shutdowns, and discussion of autistic experiences.
> 
> Note: I'm autistic, but can only write about autism from my own perspective. My writing of Ray here reflects my own experiences of autism, which give rise to my headcanons about him, but it does not reflect all autistic people's experiences.
> 
> Title from Yeats' poem [The Second Coming](http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html).
> 
> On tumblr [here](https://sophiainspace.tumblr.com/).


End file.
